Charles M. Binkley

Charles Binkley was born in Indiana. He had experience running large boats on the North Thompson River before he came north to the Yukon. In the winter he built and raced boats on Seattle lakes with his half-brother Emerson Reid. He designed and built the fifty-foot gasoline launch Olof Splgatus in the Yukon. Max Nelson and partners owned the boat in 1913, and they sold it to Syd Barrington when it proved to be a good boat for transporting goods and passengers up the White River to Donjek. Binkley stayed with the launch as the engineer. In 1914, Syd Barrington commissioned the building of a new gas launch, Hazel B., using Binkley’s ideas. It was named for Syd Barrington’s wife. Barrington and Binkley took the new launch up the Porcupine River in mid-summer of that year.¹⁾

Barrington and Binkley designed and had more boats built for the Alaska railroad project in 1916. The boats were constructed by the Canal Manufacturing Company in Seattle and knocked down and shipped to Anchorage. The eighty-seven-foot boats had twin screws in tunnels running through the bottom from bow to stern. The first Barrington and Binkley boat, the B&B No.1 was tested on the Ross and Fortymile rivers and was sold to the Alaska Engineering Commission. B&B’s boats 2 through 5 were built to run on the rivers emptying into Cook’s Inlet.²⁾